Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Senate on Tuesday passed a national security appropriations package that would boost the Department of Energy’s radiological safety efforts in Ukraine and seed a new commercial uranium refining industry. The bill includes $2.7 billion for DOE contracts that could help the federal government acquire high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), plus about $150 million for […]

An Ohio grand jury returned numerous indictments Friday against two former FirstEnergy Corp. executives — including ousted CEO Charles “Chuck” Jones — plus the disgraced former head of the  Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. This is the latest fallout from a scandal dating back to 2019 involving two financially struggling Ohio reactors, $60 million in […]

The Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Airport, to be built on remediated land transferred from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, could still run a deficit in its fifth year of operation, according to a recent analysis from an aviation consulting firm in Kentucky. Financial performance in the fifth year, when the general aviation airport […]

The Department of Energy’s consent-based siting program to find a home for stranded spent nuclear fuel will not include talks with potential host states any time soon, a senior agency official said Wednesday. “At the right time we will start to engage with the states but now is not the right time.” Paul Murray, DOE’s […]

The Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Council is scheduled to vote Monday evening on whether to continue pursuit of a grant worth up to $2 million from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, according to online documents. Should the city win funding from DOE’s Community Capacity Building Grant Program, it plans to establish a […]

Here is an event related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 14: Meeting: The Oak Ridge Citizens Advisory Board meets at 6 p.m. Eastern Time in a hybrid session taking place at the DOE Information Center, Office of Science and Technical Information, 1 Science.gov Way, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831. […]

Reps. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.) again filed a bill that would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to certify that storage casks for nuclear waste “can safely operate” for at least 100 years. The bill, filed Jan. 31, is becoming a perennial bloomer in Congress.  Levin, whose southern California district includes the Diablo […]

In roughly a month the Washington state Department of Ecology will take comments on a Department of Energy proposal that could lead to offsite solidification and disposal of 2,000 gallons of less-radioactive tank waste from the Hanford Site in Washington state. The 45-day public comment period, on whether to grant a Research, Development, and Demonstration […]

It is both “premature and improper” to grant employees fired from a Department of Energy contractor at the Oak Ridge Site a break from the normal statute of limitations before they even join a lawsuit, a federal judge ruled in Tennessee last week. “Plaintiffs’ motion for joinder is improper because they have no authority to […]

Football-loving employees could be reporting to work with heavy eyelids this morning at both the Department of Energy’s Kansas City National Security Campus as well as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about 45 miles outside of San Francisco. The mood at the former, however, could be cheerier than the latter. The National Football League’s Kansas City […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will consider changing the way it runs the required public hearings triggered by construction of new nuclear facilities. In a memo dated Wednesday and shared by the NRC with media, commission Chair Christopher Hanson ordered the agency’s Office of the General Counsel, within 60 days, “to identify efficiencies in these mandatory […]

Maria Chappelle-Nadal, the country prosecutor for St. Louis, is running for the Democratic nomination in this year’s race for a House seat representing Missouri’s 1st district and currently held by two-term Rep. Cori. Bush (D). The St. Louis-area district includes the Jana Elementary school that closed in Oct. 2022 after discovery of radioactive contamination from […]

Missouri’s governor requested some $220,000 from the state legislature to oversee the federal government’s cleanup of Manhattan Project waste in the state and help local governments look for more contamination. The money, $221,131 in total, would go to the Radioactive Waste Investigation fund at the Division of Environmental Quality within the state’s Department of Natural […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory is trying to prevent accidental criticalities caused when fires inside gloveboxes trigger a building’s sprinkler system, which might allow water to touch fissile material, according to a federal safety watchdog. In a report dated Jan. 19, the National Nuclear Security Administration said it provided formal comments on a plan to limit […]

Department of Energy contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are making headway on remaining problems before crews can start turning some less-radioactive tank waste at the property into a solid glass form, the Hanford Advisory Board heard Tuesday. After making a batch of non-radioactive test glass in December, DOE wants to start vitrification […]

After nearly a decade, Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on Jan. 31 turned over to the commissioners a final recommendation for a new nuclear power plant decommissioning rule, according to a recent letter. The rule could be ready before summer is over, an NRC spokesperson wrote Tuesday in an email to the Exchange Monitor. “The staff […]

The Department of Energy is looking at two incidents of skin contamination at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility in New Mexico during January, according to a recent report from a federal safety agency. In one the likely source was a contaminated phone in a laboratory room, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board […]

Former and current Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have filed an unopposed motion in federal court seeking until Feb. 26 to answer a complaint by a local resident who blames his leukemia on radioactive contamination from the property. The motion, seeking three weeks beyond the original Feb. 5 deadline, was […]

A mixture of state and local emergency responders plus “commercial inspectors” and “other authorities” on Monday evening cleared a truck fire involving radioactive waste off of a highway in Tennessee, the Nashville Fire Department said. A vehicle the fire department identified as a “semi-truck” caught fire in the westbound lanes of Interstate 40, about 10 […]

New Jersey last week asked the state’s highest court to review a lower court’s ruling that Holtec International should keep the $260 million in tax credits the company got in 2014. New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin filed a petition with the New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday, local media reported. The supreme court had […]

Earnings rose at Jacobs, Dallas, in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, which the global engineering, procurement and construction company attributed partly to international infrastructure projects. Tuesday’s press release marked the first earnings results from Jacobs since the company’s Nov. 20 announcement of a plan to merge its government contracting and cyber business lines with […]

The Department of Energy contractor in charge of tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state is shopping for potential subcontractors capable of refurbishing up to 10 miles of underground pipeline for double-shelled waste-storage tanks. Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions published its notice seeking expressions of interest in the project on Jan. 30. Replies […]

A bipartisan border control bill published by the Senate over the weekend would provide $2.7 billion to jumpstart a new domestic, commercial uranium enrichment and fuel-making industry. In a statement posted Sunday to the website X, Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the bill would not pass his chamber. Aside from the […]

Those interested in bidding on a potentially $3 billion contract for Phase 1B remediation work at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state will get an extra week, until March 4, to submit their proposals, the Department of Energy said last week.  In the package of questions and answers released Feb. 1, DOE’s […]